Robert Pickton inquiry goes off the rails: Lawyer quits over failure to call aboriginal witness

Robyn Gervais was offered what must have seemed the biggest assignment of her young legal career. She was asked to represent aboriginal interests at the inquiry called to examine botched police investigations of Vancouver’s missing women and their sluggish pursuit of serial killer Robert “Willie” Pickton. Most of Pickton’s victims were aboriginal women who had disappeared from Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside.

Ms. Gervais was, of course, aware that influential native groups and individuals were boycotting the inquiry and encouraging others to do the same. She took the job, regardless. That was a mistake.

“I came in with a hopeful and naive attitude,” she said Tuesday, minutes after formally withdrawing from the process herself, and leaving the hearing room in tears. She was done in, she suggested, by the people in charge: commission of inquiry counsel and their beleaguered boss, Wally Oppal.

“I didn’t think I would have to fight to have [aboriginal] voices heard,” she told Mr. Oppal, a former appeal court judge and attorney general. “The delay in calling aboriginal witnesses, the failure to provide adequate hearing time, the ongoing lack of support from the aboriginal community and the disproportionate focus on police evidence have led me to conclude that aboriginal interests have not and will not be adequately represented in these proceedings.”

Other inquiry lawyers looked on, stunned. Their friend had rarely spoken up before.

Mr. Oppal fired back, telling Ms. Gervais that the focus of his inquiry is not “poverty and colonialism.” She had done a “disservice” to the few aboriginal witnesses who have testified at the inquiry, he said. She had “abdicated a responsibility.” Quitting now, he said, wasn’t helpful. And what about their private meeting last month, he asked. Had he not offered her some heartfelt career advice? “I told you how important your job is,” he told Ms. Gervais.

He sounded wounded, betrayed. But someone was bound to quit in a huff. One had to wonder: Who might be next?

‘I didn’t think I would have to fight to have [aboriginal] voices heard’

Before Ms. Gervais broke ranks and bailed, a senior member of the provincial bar, a vastly experienced, widely respected Vancouver lawyer named Darrell Roberts gave the commissioner an earful. The inquiry, said Mr. Roberts, had been derailed. “It was off the rails from the very beginning,” he emphasized.

He went further. Mr. Oppal should have “recused” himself the moment the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) took the position that Pickton had committed no crimes within its jurisdiction. Pickton had murdered women at his farm, but surely, said Mr. Roberts, the offences began in Vancouver, where the victims were picked up.

He reminded the inquiry that in 1999, B.C.’s attorney-general and the Vancouver Police Board authorized a reward of up to $100,000 “for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the unlawful confinement, kidnapping or murder of any or all of the … women, missing from the streets of Vancouver.”

After Pickton’s arrest for murder in 2002, the reward offer was renewed. By then, Mr. Oppal was the province’s Attorney-General. Mr. Roberts suggested the commissioner had some personal conflict in the whole matter.

It was a convoluted argument, tortuously told, and it did not go over well. “You need to get your facts straight,” Mr. Oppal snapped at Mr. Roberts, who snapped right back.

The inquiry is causing everyone fits. Relatives of the missing and murdered women have called it a “whitewash,” a “cover-up” and a “sham,” thanks to a preponderance of police lawyers, police witnesses giving self-serving statements and reports, missing investigation notes and records, sudden procedural shifts and directives designed, some claim, to suffocate the truth.

Counsel for the missing women have suggested the fix is in, that the inquiry is being carefully managed toward a predictable conclusion that won’t create more problems for the two police forces under scrutiny, the VPD and the RCMP. Both have acknowledged systemic failures in their investigations.

But there are information gaps. The province’s own criminal justice branch decided in 1998 to stay charges of attempted murder against Pickton, then in the midst of his killing spree. The decision defied recommendations from RCMP investigators, who believed they had made a “slam dunk” case against Pickton.

Mr. Oppal’s inquiry has a duty to examine the province’s role in the failure to stop Pickton, and to make findings of fact and recommendations to prevent another such travesty. But six months into the hearings, the 1998 stay of proceedings has barely been addressed. Witnesses expected to appear include justice branch officials who determined not to prosecute Pickton. Two are now judges.

Mr. Oppal says the hearings must conclude at the end of April. He has promised to deliver his final report and recommendations by the end of June, to B.C. Attorney-General Shirley Bond. She’s not offering an extension. If she did, there might be no one left to take the offer.

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